Once again, I return to the drawing. This is one of the places that I took a shortcut. Were I in a studio, I would have done a top-down view of Coraline in addition to the front and side to make it easier to delegate construction. Using the front and side view, I get the […]
I’ve had a couple of people ask me if I’m going to make a Coraline for myself. No. I will keep the dud head that I made, but since Subterranean asked me to make only three, I’m making only three. One for Neil Gaiman, one for Dave McKean and one for… you? To learn more
How many Coralines? Read More »
Rob always gets on my case if I forget to unplug the gluegun when I’m finished with it. My defense has been that the state of “finished” fluctuates. I mean, finished for the moment versus finished for the day. It takes the gun awhile to heat up, so I don’t like to unplug it when
In which Mary learns why one should unplug glueguns Read More »
I started making Coraline’s body. I’m going to walk you through the process to make an arm; the rest of the body follows pretty similar principals. To start with, I take the initial scale drawing that I did of Coraline and turn it into a technical drawing. Which is to say that I decide where
I did a color test on the botched head. The painterly quality tends to hide the glue spots, which is a bonus. Unfortunately, the hard line under her mouth shows where I didn’t get the seam tight enough. I’ll let you in on a secret. Coraline only has one ear. The way her hair is
I finally hit on the final pattern for Coraline’s face, today. Just for kicks, I took a picture of all the drafts that made it to pattern stage. There were, I don’t know, maybe five other iterations of her face that weren’t good enough to pattern. Making the lips happen was a pain in the
The many faces of Coraline Read More »
My business and creative partner, Jodi Eichelberger, has been doing some podcasts. Here’s the description of his latest: From August of 1994 through the spring of 1997 Mary and I toured a production of “Pied Piper†with Tears of Joy Theatre. We were particularly close to this show because Mary designed it and I wrote
Who stole the show? Read More »
Coraline has lips now, thank heavens. I filmed myself making a draft of her head today. It’s not the final draft, but it will show you how the assembly happens. The first thirty seconds are a montage of the dull pattern tracing, cutting and such. The last six minutes of the video are in real-time
Drafting Coraline’s face Read More »
I had to head down to meet Keith De Candido so I could finally sign the bookplates for the new Doctor Who anthology, and the restaurant was in the neighborhood of several paper stores that I needed to visit. It’s a good thing too, because with the flooding from the storms here last night, I’m
Paper and testing Coraline’s hair Read More »
I mentioned that I am using a German paper-folding technique, created by Albrecht Roser, to create the Coraline face. As it happens, I have a pattern and instructions for a face up at my puppet company’s website. If you want to play along at home. It’s for Gerta from the Snow Queen. I start off
When I do a bid on a puppet, mechanisms are the most expensive part. They are fiddly things and no matter how many times you’ve built something similar, each puppet is radically different. This dog puppet, which I’m creating ears for, technically has four mechs in it since each ear is capable of two movements.
What we say. I think we’re going to have to rip their spines out. Want to try on my beaver? Man. That’s a seriously long rod The chicken lady isn’t safe around other puppets What am I supposed to do with this extra head? The beaver was too tight for him Look! Spanking the monkey
Yet more sayings from work Read More »
Subterranean Press has asked me to create three dolls of the title character in Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, using the art of Dave McKean as my reference point. Mr. Gaiman and Mr. McKean will each receive one of these, and the third goes to a lucky customer who preorders Coraline direct from SubPress. To begin, I
Beginning to build Coraline Read More »
I just added making dog ears to my plate. This is also a project for Mabou Mines, though this time I’ve been hired by the incandescent Emily DeCola. (I built monkeys with her back in February.) I forgot to take process shots yesterday, but I’ll do it when I go into the Puppet Kitchen again.
Remember that day I talked about paint-drying because I had picked up three gigs that I couldn’t talk about yet? This is one of them. I’ll head you off at the pass, I’m not doing the book design or an audio version. Read on for my involvement. Subterranean Press is proud to announce a special
Subterranean Press » Blog Archive » Announcing CORALINE by Neil Gaiman Read More »